Monday, February 1, 2010

Isn't it funny that I'm aiming for $10 in adsense on the second month when I haven't even placed a single ad unit on my site? Well, I only realized that after re-reading the goals. So I placed the ads and despite the dismal traffic, I managed to get two clicks!

And that's not all. I'm happy to announce that the site is already inching its way to the first page. The last check on Google Webmaster Tools showed that it's already in position #13. That's a few notches away. But guess what, when I checked the results from google, I'm actually at #11 already. One notch higher and the main goal of our experiment is already done.

I think it will be a matter of days before the site finally land on the first page. Not bad for a lazy person like me. But to be honest, the promising results fired me up. Let's see where it goes.

2 tweets + multiple RT on the celebrities I follow (I'll post more about it)

Basically, that's what I've done for the day. Hopefully it will help push the site to page one by tomorrow. I'll let everybody know if that happens.

At this point, the traffic is not that great. So, I'm banking on the prospect of the first page. I checked my competitors and I think I can outrank some of them. After I land on #10, the next logical step is to shoot for #7.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Ok folks! After 10 days, I'm here again. It's almost the end of the first month and I would say that I'm very far from my targets. It's not an excuse that we had a major software implementation on my day job and I didn't really worked on this project for five days. Actually for the whole ten days, I barely did anything save for some commenting. But then again, the schedule is already set. So, no excuses there.

Just to refresh, my primary goals are (1) to land in first page of Google for a chosen keywords(2) to earn $10 for the first two months

As of today, I don't see my site on the search results on my primary two-word target keyword.

If there's any consolation, I actually landed in page one for two secondary keywords. Take note that only difference between the main and the secondary keywords is the second word. The first words on both keywords are the same.

I think I'll have more time starting tomorrow so I'll work on this again.

Entrecard - For some reason, my website is not yet approved by Entrecard. I don't know why but then, that's ok. I'll just try

New Posts - There's a total of 13 posts but only 10 are published. The rest are scheduled.

Forum Posting - I found a great online community that discusses

Commenting - I found a site which is a potential goldmine for traffic and link juice. And I think quite a number of people are already exploiting this site. I can't tell you yet but I promise I'll post them at the end of the 60 day experiment. I only made four comments here and I got 15 visitors. A few more comments were made at a U.S. based technology blog. Again, that's for link juice purposes.

Twitter - I also created a twitter account. I now have 8 followers but with very few tweets. I'll improve on this over the weekend.

By the way, below is the chart of my analytics account. Not bad, eh?

Again, the progress is very slow but I actually got an uptick of traffic yesterday. The traffic is mainly referred by my comment on the news site where I left my comment.

If you haven't noticed, there are five visitors from Google. They are not my main target keywords but any visitor is highly appreciated. Also, the bounce rate is pretty low. That's promising. I attribute that (low bounce rate) to the design of the template.

The next few days would be extraordinarily busy (if i'm not yet drowing!) on my day job so I'll give an update after a few days again. Probably on Monday, Jan 25 which is the 25th day. That would be almost half the mark and let's see what would be the progress. :D

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

First Visitors

I got my first visitor yesterday courtesy of some referrals from the websites where I commented. Since most of those websites are U.S. based and/or targeted to U.S. internet users, it's not surprising that almost all who visited my site are stateside.

Search Engine Visitor

On the search engine side, I got my very first SE visitor courtesy of Google. Apparently, the site is already #4 in a certain keyword. It's quite surprising because it took only a few days and now, my site is in #4! Yup, you read it right, I'm already on the first page. But it's no reason to celebrate just yet. That's not my target keyword so it's just a bonus. But nevertheless, I'm still happy. I mean, very happy!

So what else did I do? Here they are.

Entrecard - OK, it's no longer popular as it was but based on my experience, it's a good starting point of getting enough traffic. This will also be my source of future exchange link partners.

Amazon Affiliate - Yeah, I placed some affiliate links already. The links are not intrusive, though. Hopefully it converts. But of course, I'll need the traffic.

Forum Posting - Yeah, I should have done that the other day. But now, I joined in a forum where there are discussions about my target keyword. There are lively discussions so I joined. No links yet. :D Here's a little tip. Since this is a skin disorder, it is the women who gets affected very much. So basically, it is them who mostly search for the term. The dummy accounts I created are females, too, so that when I join into their conversation, I'll be "IN". But of course, I have to be careful.

Blog Commenting - This is where I got my first visitors.

New Post - I just published my eight post and two more to follow immediately. I already scheduled the two new posts with two days interval.

As I have said, I'm very happy with the initial results considering that I wasn't able to complete my plans and was even delayed on some items.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

OK, my previous post is actually on Day 11 and I was talking about what I did for Day 10 and what I plan to do yesterday (day 11). Of all the link building that I plan to do, I only managed to bring up 2. That is the PR4 unrelated website and the PR2 unrelated website. I chose those two because I also own those sites and I know that the google spider is crawling them pretty frequent. Also, I know that I won't be able to do the other links because I'm drowning again on my day job!

And what has been the results? After barely 12 hours, my site has been indexed!!! You read it right, folks! I'm quite surprised, too! So I manually checked the site if it is appearing on the search results. Well, it is not. But that's fine. I'm still happy because my posts has been published less than 12 hours ago and now, they are already indexed. For me, that's a sign that I'll be able to reach my primary goal of bringing the site to page 1 within 60 days.

And take note, this is sitting on a sub-domain. As I have told you before, I don't want to spend a single penny here.

So what's left to do now? I'll do the rest of the link building, of course!(1) PR3 Incoming Sidebar Link from unrelated website(2) PR1 Incoming Sidebar Link from unrelated website(5) Incoming Links from unrelated websites(10) comments in various blogs(10) forum posts with signature linked to the website

I'll have to do the rest and maybe add some more contents. I have at least three on the pipeline. That will definitely help in "freshness".

VPS One Plan

I have one VPS One from them which I got for lesser price last year but if you compare the specs of my VPS to the one they are currently selling, mine pales in comparison. Damn. But the inconvenience of moving to another server discourages me. Anyhow, I'm still happy with my current plan.

Take note that with fast customer support and Jaguar's dirt cheap price, I can't find any other company that will beat their service. At least up to now. However, I still find their shared hosting to be a bit high. But then again, their shared hosting is rock solid (I know because a friend is hosting there).

Monday, January 11, 2010

Ok, yesterday was the 10th day and I'm here again to give you an update. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to complete the 10 posts that I planned. Actually, I only managed to complete 7 posts. But I’ll make use of them for now. One of them is more than a thousand words anyways. Seven posts would be enough, I think.

On top of that, I also installed the Google analytics tracking code. That will come handy in the following days when I get down to analyze the traffic. You know, where those visitors are coming from, how many visitors are coming from search engines, etc. I also added the website in Google Webmaster Tools. It’s a very handy tool and where I would be able to know when exactly the Google spider crawled my site as well as what are the keywords seen. If there’s any problem, I can then tweak the site to solve the issues. And by the way, you submit the sitemap through the webmaster tools. But I’ll do that once all the posts are published.

So today, I’m going to start link building to my new site. Here’s the strategy that I’m planning to use. Take note that it’s not proven. It’s an experiment for me and I’m not sure if this will actually work.

(1) PR4 Incoming Sidebar Link from unrelated website

(1) PR3 Incoming Sidebar Link from unrelated website

(1) PR2 Incoming Sidebar Link from unrelated website

(2) PR1 Incoming Sidebar Link from unrelated website

(5) Incoming Links from unrelated websites

(10) comments in various blogs

(10) forum posts with signature linked to the website

At least that’s the plan. Save from the forum posts, I think all the others are easy to do. I already have the PR sites where the links will be coming from while I also have plenty of the completely unrelated non-PR sites. What’s important here is that the websites where the link will be coming from are already indexed by Google. I’ll also make the anchor text varied although I’m not really sure about that. The PR4 website will carry my main keyword as its anchor text.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

It's the seventh day of the project and I'm almost at the end of the first 10 days. As stated on my previous post, the original plan requires that I have 10 posts at the end of the 10th day. I only have 5 posts ready by today and bringing that to 10 posts would be a real challenge for me. I can tell you a lot of excuses but in the end of the day, I still need to come up with 10 posts or else, the project will be delayed. That's something that I don't want to happen. Regardless of how busy I am, I need to produce that 10 posts.

But hey, who said that it would be an easy task. I already stated earlier that the real challenge in the setup of the blog/site is producing the content. But being hard to do doesn't mean that it is not doable. I'm still optimistic that I'll be able to come up with 5 more posts in the next 3 days.

On top of the articles, I also prepared some logins in some related forums. They are actually not exactly related but they are somewhat in the same industry. They will be used once I start linking in the next couple of days.

So again, the price-point this type of laptop is very high. But let's see what we can do. We'll do our best and we wish you good luck too!

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

OK, I missed posting yesterday. The progress has been slow the past two days as my day job required more time from me. So there's little time left for other things. Consequently, this project is part of 'other things'. But that's okay, it's only the fifth day of the experiment. So, it's a small hiccup.

So, what did I do? I create two more posts but I haven't published it yet. So what I have on my little website is one entry (FAQ, 1600 words). It has no incoming links yet so I must say, it's still on stealth mode. Though the site is already up and running, I don't expect google to index its pages.

On another note, I'm quite elated with the keyword I chose. You see, the more I research on it, the more I feel that I found a very good keyword. With that, I become more and more optimistic that this project will be successful. Of course, I also tell myself that this may not work but regardless, the experience will help me on my next projects. At this point in time, I must say that I already learned quite a number of things or at least, implemented things that I read about before.

So let's just say that this project will now add another purpose. On top of my original goals, it is also my exam that I need to pass. Ok, it won't be hard to pass. Because if it make $100 by the end of March, I'll get a 3 (passing grade). But $100 by end of February would mean 1 (highest grade). haha.

For the rest of the week, I'll add more articles and then hopefully by the middle of next week, I'll be able to assemble 10 posts and then publish them. By then, I can start my link building.

Monday, January 4, 2010

Content

I've written my first content for the keyword that I chose. Actually, it was done yesterday. To give you an idea on what keyword I chose, I decided to give you a very nice hint. It is something to do with a skin disorder. It is very common and a lot of people are searching for more information about it as seen in the External keyword tool.

The first content is a FAQ. It's just a rewritten article. The original content came from various sources. Since it is a FAQ, it was easy to make 1500+ words. But I don't expect the same for succeeding posts and they will be limited probably to within 200 words or less. As stated in my announcement, I'll be posting 10 of them in the next 10 days. That's one and there's 9 to go.

Once the first 10 is published, I'll start with the linking and promotion of the blog and on the side, I'll be creating new posts probably 2 per week. In all, the aim is 25 posts with a target of 200 words each. Just to be clear, I don't think I really need the 200. For me, as long as the post is relevant to the topic and most importantly, provides value to my would-be visitors, it's done! Be it only 50 words or 1000, it doesn't matter.

Site Layout

I'm choosing Kwatog's PanglaoWP as my template because it is a very basic and squeaky clean template. The template is actually based on iNove. Mike of Kwatog.com has modified the template to add new options, a second sidebar and a number of widgets. I specifically asked Mike to add some widgets specially inside the post itself. I've seen the template working at Bohol Beach Resorts (of kwatog) and Davao Beach Resort (of skiper).

Another reason why I chose the template is because once I used it, there will be less exit points for the visitors other than the ads. I've seen it work for one of Kwatog's site which is now generating a healthy 6-7% CTR.

Now, my target is modest. If I'll have a 3.5% CTR and get 100 visitors daily. That simply translates to 3.5 clicks per day. As my target is $1.00 per click, that would be $3.5 per day which in turn is equivalent to $105 monthly. That $100 target is for long term.

So again, wish me luck. By the way, if in case you have some questions, please shoot a comment. I'll try my best to answer your questions as soon as I'm free.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Yesterday, I announced that I'll be embarking on a little experiment to land a brand new website in page 1 of Google search using free tools. Today is the first day of the project and the most important thing for this day is the keyword.

Much of the day has been spent for searching for keyword. I'll let you know at the end of this project what would be that keywords but for now, I'll keep it to myself first. But as earlier said, the keyword is related to medical field/medical condition. To help me a bit, I narrowed the lists to the medical condition (disease) that I might be familiar with either because I had it, the family had it, or someone I know is experiencing it. With that, I'll hit two birds with one stone. One, I get to research on the topic which may benefit my family and then at the same time, publish it on the website that I'll be creating.

Several hours later, I finally chose a set of keyword about a medical condition that affects 1% of the population. You might say 1% is too small but with roughly 6 billion, we're talking about 60,000,000 people affected. But more importantly, someone from my family is actually affected by this. So off I went to research for keywords.

As I have said, I'll only be using Adword's External Keyword Tool. Here's the screenshot of the keywords I picked. The screenshot that you are looking at is actually from the broad range type. I also checked the exact and phrase lists and picked the keywords that consistently appeared on three list types. For this experiment,

Keyword #4

Keyword #5

I'll be concentrating on keywords #1 and #2 as I believe it would be easier to rank for those. As I still consider myself a newbie in this field, I have the following criteria on choosing the keyword from the list.

Search Result - should be low. If I can get a keyword with 200,000 results and below, I'll use it provided that the volume and CPC is good. :D

Volume : At least 2,500. The more, the better. It's useless, anyway, if rank in a keyword that nobody is searching for.

Average Cost per Click : It must be at lest $3. Of course, I won't be getting that when someone click on my ads but I'll be happy if I get $1 per click. That's a good 30% of the estimated CPC.

Other than that, none actually. I heard that SENuke, Micro Niche Finder and Keyword Elite would make your life a lot easier and much more effective. But then again, I'm broke and like most of you, I wouldn't want to shell any of my remaining funds for this. But that's not to say that I won't be trying those softwares in the future. If I get some success again and bring this thing to the new level, I'll definitely try them.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Since it is a brand spanking new year, I want to embark on an experiment. A lot of things has changed in the last 8 months. While I was busy with my day job (that ate up all my time), I failed to update this blog. Actually, I got left behind by the fast changing SEO landscape. Moreover, the financial meltdown has dampen the the advertising market. It's understandable but together with the financial crisis, came my online earnings. Old strategies no longer work. My already meager income came down to a trickle. Heck, I almost failed to reach the Adsense threshold for the month of December.

In that note, I need to find a new way to earn money online. Ever since I embarked on this online journey, I met failures and some relative success. It's time to start anew. In the next 60 days, I'll be updating this blog with what I'll be doing for this experiment.

The main objective are as follows:

Land on Page 1 of a three-word keyword which would be related to medicine/medical.

Earn $10 from adsense on the second month.

Secondary would be the following:

Earn from ClickBank (haven't tried it before)

Get PR1(it's a long shot, actually)

Since I'm broke (as I have always been -- that's why I'm Taong Grasa), I don't have money to buy softwares or links or articles. So I'll have to do all the things for free. That's also the reason why I have 60 days as target. So what are the techniques that I shall employ? Here they are.

Keyword Research : Google Adwords External Keyword ToolRelying on just one tool may not be a good idea but I really don't have money to buy professional tools.

Article Writing : PLR/MRR/EzineArticle rewriting. I'll hand code on my free time. I know it would be hard and time consuming but my target is just one article per day in the 2nd to 10th days of the experiment. I might need some help from a friend, though. But that will be for free, of course.

Hosting - again, I don't want to pay for anything so I'll do it in a WordPress Mu powered free blogsite(much like wordpress.com). I'll tell you about it in later posts why I chose it.

Links - I can't buy links so I'll be asking some reciprocal links from some friends online. I'll do manual submissions to at least 20 directories. If I still have some time, I'll increase it to 50.

Promotion - Yahoo answers (10 questions), forum postings(50 posts , related or otherwise) and blog commenting(100) will be utilized. I might provide the lists of URLs of my posts/comments. Just maybe. It depends.

The question is, would I succeed? I don't know. But guess what, whatever is the outcome, I'll be happy with it. Let's see what the metal tiger (2010) is going to offer. This experiment is actually inspired by Terry Kyle in his post.